


the canticle of zevran arainai

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 03:37:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2532662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All he has been has brought him to this place and time, where he becomes who he should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the canticle of zevran arainai

_Break, so that we may rebuild._ They never said it like that — not these hard-eyed elder Crows that strapped him down and introduced his flesh to fire and ice, these elder Crows whose whip-crack sent him and his peers darting forward and leaping for the crags, climbing slowly at first but then learning the intuition of the fleet-footed, toughened feet barely feeling the rocks under them as muscle-corded arms hauled them up the steep cliff face, these elder Crows who did not offer words of comfort as they writhed on their cots late into the balmy night, injuries lighting hellfires under their sun-seared skin, bones knitting together with painstaking slowness, no potions for you, no balms, no poultices. _Feel_ your body breaking, their eyes said as they supervised the healing. _Feel_ the infirmity in your weak and coddled limbs, and _relish_ the pain, because on the other side of pain is newfound strength. Zevran the Orphaned became Zevran the Hardened.

 _Break, so that we may rebuild._ Taliesin favoured wounds of a different sort — his heart as hard as cold iron, or so he insisted, he hooked his talons into Zevran’s innate sentimentality and twisted, drawing forth blood and tears in equal measure, looming like a vulture and waiting for those times when Zevran would weaken, when his iron body and mind would be eclipsed by his red heart.  
"You wish to know what love is? _This_ is love, amongst Crows. You complain that I hurt you, but it is this pain that will keep you alive.”  
Zevran the Hardened was not enough. He must be Zevran the Cruel.

{ _Rinna wept, and asked if he did not love her. Tormented by Taliesin’s insidious philosophy, Zevran could not answer, but through the blood and tears he wept later, when he was alone._ }

 _Break, so that we may rebuild._ A Grey Warden and his companions lit new fires under his hardened flesh, magical attacks shattering his armour and stunning his mind, but he had been trained, and he kept fighting, until his blood painted the grass underneath him. His lips twitched in a shadow of a smile. “Just so,” he murmurs as the Warden stands over him, blocking out the setting sun. Zevran the Cruel would see his fitting end. “Just so.”

But the Warden does not deal the killing blow, but instead peppers him with questions, regards him with eyes that were not hard, hauls him up and impatiently waves away the protests of a man called Alistair — “Arguing later. Litter now.” — and, carried to camp and tended… _tended,_ his wounds bathed in magic and potions, for the first time in his life… Zevran felt something else break as he drifted into a dreamless sleep.

He awoke as Zevran the Uncertain, floundering as he was thrust into this new world, a light tremble setting into his hands as he battled nightmares and day-terrors, his broken mind struggling to make sense of this new life and these new companions, companions that laughed together and fought together and drank together and wept when others fell to darkspawn blows, wept and cursed and threw all their efforts into healing magics. Companions with red hearts and hard bodies, and walls around those red hearts that sometimes, just sometimes, they allowed to crumble.

Zevran the Uncertain shivered in the embrace of the Grey Warden who had saved his broken life and given him the tools to reshape it, the Grey Warden who did not hide the hurt in his eyes when Zevran lapsed into the false comfort of the Zevrans he’s been, the Cruel and the Hardened, the Grey Warden who nevertheless _loved_ him.  
"I don’t understand. Love is not pain, Zevran. Have you never been loved?"  
Thinking of Rinna’s brimming eyes, Zevran clenches his fists, and wars with himself.

 _Break, so that we may rebuild._ They were the Qunari’s words, Sten the Stoic, who easily batted aside Zevran’s bluster and bawdiness to lay hawk-sharp eyes on the fragments of Zevran himself, who did not speak often but who hit home whenever ey did, who had also broken and been accepting of the redemption of death, only to find it elsewhere — “I break, so that I may be rebuilt. Maraas shokra. Asit tal-eb.”

The hard-eyed elder Crows had taught him that man stood alone, placing trust in no one, keeping his heart close and his weapon closer. Love was an illusion, and a lethal one.  
The Grey Wardens and their companions taught differently, and did not leave Zevran the Tormented to writhe on his bedroll alone.   
"I do not require your assistance! I am not weak!" he insisted, but there was weakness in all of them, even Sten the Stoic, because they were alive and sapient and whole; and from this he learnt.

Into the smelting fires Zevran ritualistically threw the titles he’d worn, and from them he forged the ones he would carry until his natural death: Zevran the Thrice-Broken. Zevran the Redeemed. Zevran the Lover, Zevran the Loved.


End file.
